Aramean Organisations sent a letter
to President-elect Barack Obama: Help the persecuted Aramean people
of the Middle-East, focusing on Iraq.

Nr.:
2008-11-26/6

Netherlands,
26th of November 2008

Subject:
Re: Your overwhelming election as 44th president of the
United States of America

The Most
Honourable President-elect of the United States of America

His Excellency
Barack Obama

The
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

United States

Dear Mr.
President-elect,

We, the
undersigned, the Arameans of Aram-Nahrin Organization, the Aramean
Democratic Organization and Platform Aram want to congratulate you
with your impressive and overwhelming election as the 44th
president of United States of America.

We wish you much
success and wisdom and we hope that under your leadership the United
States of America will become a beacon of prosperity, stability,
equality and justice for everyone.

Your Excellency,
we would like to take this opportunity to draw your attention to the
fragile situation of the Indigenous Aramean people of Mesopotamia,
in ancient times called Aram-Nahrin in Aramaic and Aram-Naharaim in
Hebrew.

The Aramean
people (not to be confused with ‘Armenians’) have been present for
thousands of years in this part of the world, also known as the
Cradle of Civilization. The Aramean people speak Aramaic, the
language spoken by Abraham, Moses and Jesus, through which they have
made a very important contribution to world civilizations. [1]
This ancient Semitic people, now divided into several denominations
and spread throughout the Middle East, amount to approximately 8
million people worldwide.

History
testifies that the Aramean people are peaceful minded, living
according to the ten commandments, showing respect, dignity and love
to their neighbours and always respecting the law of the countries
in which they reside. They show others the example of love and
brotherhood. In contrast to other peoples they never resorted to the
path of intolerance, fanaticism and violent uprising. On the
contrary their motto has always been: loving and respecting your
neighbour like yourself!

Unfortunately,
the Aramean concept of peaceful cooperation based on equality and
mutual understanding is not cheered by everybody in the complex and
turbulent area of the Middle-East; which has been the scene of
battles and conflicts for hundreds of years between various groups
and peoples whose dictionary seems to lack words like peace,
brotherhood and respect. Our terrible experience is that many of
these groups seem rather to resort to the path of intolerance and
fanaticism.

This very path
of fanaticism and intolerance has been the cause of discrimination
against our nation, exclusion, extortion, ethnic cleansing,
genocides[2] and continuous persecutions for hundreds of
years right up until today.

Our nation is
facing difficulties in many areas of the Middle-East, however their
situation in Iraq is most severe, in particular in the Mosul area
where a mass exodus took place in late September; after killings and
threats by the forces of intolerance and fanaticism. In several
letters to the government of Iraq and the United Nations we have
tried to ask for their attention for the dire situation of our
people[2]. In spite of measures taken by the central
government, the situation of the Aramean indigenous nation of the
Middle-East remains very precarious
in the Mosul area.

The
marginalization, persecution and exclusion of our nation for hundred
of years and their fragile situation in our days, where they are
threatened with ethnic cleansing from the land of their forefathers,
is not exclusively due to the forces of fanaticism and intolerance,
but it has its roots in the spiritual colonial practices of the
Western missionaries and diplomats in the 16th and 19th
centuries whereby nationalism and fanaticism was brought to the
Middle-East. [2] In addition to this, we believe that the
genocide of 1915 [4] which claimed the lives of around
600.000 Arameans of different denominations, would have been less
severe if the Arameans were united and were not stuck with the
hatred that was implemented by the outsiders in the name of “assistance”,
“education” and “faith”.

Your Excellency;

The motto of
your election campaign was ‘change’, a term heard and understood
very well by people from all walks of life. This not only attracted
the attention of young people, of those living onthe fringes of society, and of
those who have been marginalized and ignored, but this also gave
hope to many throughout the world.

From our side,
we hope that this change, under your leadership, not only will be
implemented in the United States but will also have its effects on
other peoples and nations, who are living in a very weak and fragile
situations throughout the world, including the Aramean indigenous
nation of Aram-Nahrin, also made known as “Assyrians” or Chaldeans
in some media; who at this moment face terror and destruction in
Iraq, in particular in the Mosul area.

We hope that the
situation of many weak, excluded and ignored nations, including
Arameans, throughout the world will became a part of the spearhead
of US foreign policy in order to facilitate more justice, equality,
peace and brotherhood for many all over the world.

We are looking
forward to working with your administration and we would be honored
to provide you, where needed, with genuine information regarding the
Aramean Indigenous Nation of Aram-Nahrin who has been continuously
present for thousands of years in this part of the world. Again we
want to underscore our best wishes to achieve the noble goals you
have so clearly expressed during the election campaign.

Respectfully
Yours,

Gabriel Sengo

Chairman

Arameans of Aram-Naharaim
Organization

Gabi Gallo

Chairman

Aramaic Democratic
Organization

Aboud Gouriye

Chairman

Platform
Aram

Footnotes:

[1] The contribution of the Aramean
nation to world civilizations is well-summarized by a world-
renowned Eminent Oxford University Scholar Professor Sebastian
Brock, a specialist on Aramaic (Syriac) and Hebrew, who said “Almost
all societies are dependent upon the use of writing, but very few
peoples realise that the great majority of the world’s scripts can
be traced back to a common ancestor, an alphabet invented in the
Middle East four thousands years ago, which was
subsequently refined by the Phoenicians and the Aramaeans who spread
it throughout the known world. It is thus without doubt one of
the greatest gifts of the Aramean peoples to world culture.”
(Hidden Pearl volume I: Page 27)

“…Nevertheless
it is undeniable that the simple Aramaic alphabet of 22 letters has
had the most extraordinary impact on the development of alphabetic
writing systems throughout the world. Indeed, it is very hard to
imagine how human culture and scientific learning could have
progressed without (the Aramaic language).” (Hidden
Pearl volume I: Page 58)

[3]
The result of this was that
a part of our nation started identifying itself as “Chaldeans” (since
the 16th century) and another part as “Assyrians” (since
the 19th century). Roughly speaking, this division was
due to the spiritual war between the Western political and spiritual
colonial powers, that is to say the war between Catholics and
Protestants, which was battled out at the cost of the Aramen nation,
thereby planting doubts regarding their ethnic origin; with the
result that a kind of spiritual genocide was committed against our
nation.

A divided nation
is obviously a weak nation. Through this division we have been made
vulnerable to the hostile environment of the Middle-East where we
are threatened with extinction and ethnic cleansing. The events
which took place in Mosul, Baghdad and other areas in Iraq, where
our nation was forced to leave their homes and heart, are vivid
proof of our assertions.

The
discussion around the genocide of 1915 is for an important part
concentrated on the Armenian question and is called ‘Armenian
genocide’. This is not fair, for not only the Armenians have
suffered, but also the Aramean Indigenous Christian nation of
Mesopotamia as well as the Greeks have suffered under these horrible
acts, which cannot be described by pen and paper.

Contrary to the Greek and Armenian Genocide, the Aramean genocide
consists of both Physical and Spiritual genocide.

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